Gordon Brown was left out of Ed Miliband's speech, which mentioned Douglas Alexander and colleagues 'from across the UK'. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

• A militant pensioner disrupted proceedings on the burning issue of the moment: devolved powers for English regions to match those granted to the Celtic and London fringes. Many Labour types in Manchester feel guilty about their own failure to address the anomaly thrown back up the agenda by Scotland’s referendum. Voters rejected elected mayors (2011), the coalition canned regional development agencies (2010). But it was Blairite sabotage that ensured the 2004 referendum defeat (by 78%) for an elected Geordie assembly in the north-east, so ITN’s Chris Ship reminded party worthies on the conference fringe. “Because they weren’t given any powers, the buggers in cabinet wouldn’t give them any,” roared a familiar voice from the back: John Prescott has spoken.

• Dennis Skinner’s memoirs, Sailing Close to the Wind, are winning the battle of the conference books, 200 copies signed and sold, reports Blackwells. But Harry Leslie Smith’s account of a lost Britain – at 91 he’s nine years older – is giving the Beast of Bolsover a run for his money, well ahead of ex-mod Alan Johnson’s second volume, Please, Mr Postman. What’s not selling well? “Any book about Scotland.”

• Labour in Manchester is baffled by why the Two Eds have been making such a long-winded mess of an easy (“it’s difficult, let’s not rush it”) answer to “English votes for English laws”, the Tories’ Clacton byelection slogan. London MPs are the same as Scotland ones: they can vote on devolved matters they have no control over, Balls protests in vain. But he’s right. Mayor Boris’s budget is £14bn, Scotland’s budget only £30bn. The issue is not of principle, only ethnicity.

• Crossing swords with pompous thinktanker Philip Blond on the conference fringe, Miliband’s pint-size chief adviser, Stewart Wood, called for another glass of wine. When it arrived he unexpectedly recognised the waiter as Tory press officer Richard Holden. So whose was the tape recorder lying on the table next to Wood, hoping to catch a gaffe? Holden’s? Such tricks have been known.

• Mid-morning conference chairman MP Keith Vaz kept chiding speakers to be brief because the timetable was slipping. But few talked as much as publicity hound Vaz, who even joked that gangling Chuka Umunna would later be dancing “Gangnam style” with compact shadow colleague Douglas Alexander. “We’re 27 minutes late, bad chairmanship,” announced the shameless Vaz, who calls women delegates “sister”. His own sister, Valerie, happens to be an MP too.

• As the chair of Chinese for Labour, publisher Sonny Leong is a rare high-profile Chinese in UK politics. Yesterday he used his brief conference spot to denounce motormouth pal-of-Dave, Jeremy Clarkson, for racist language. It helps that, like Unite’s boss, Len McCluskey, who spoke too, he’s a donor.

Quote of the Day

Ed Miliband raised eyebrows with what he did not say when thanking those who helped the no vote in the Scottish referendum. Douglas Alexander and colleagues “from across the United Kingdom” were thanked. But not Gordon Brown.